


And So We Burned

by TheBeastofBurton



Series: Songs of the Cobblestones [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure, Character Study, DLC content, F/F, Jaws of Hakkon, Romance, Sequel, The Descent - Freeform, Trespasser - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4777451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBeastofBurton/pseuds/TheBeastofBurton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to 'Songs of the Cobblestones'. </p><p>For earth, sky. For winter, summer. For darkness, light. </p><p>F!Trevelyan/Sera. Eventual spoilers for all DLCs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: The Darkness of the World**

_But the one who repents, who has faith_  
Unshaken by the darkness of the world,  
And boasts not, nor gloats  
Over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight  
In the Maker's law and creations, she shall know  
The peace of the Maker's benediction.

_Transfigurations 10:1_

             

            “Stupid darkspawn.”

            Elisabeth looked over with a smirk when she heard Sera spitting off the edge of the lift.  “You’re much more likely to hit rock, you know.”

            “Doesn’t matter,” she insisted, kicking a chunk of shale off with a satisfied nod.  “Still their house.  Message sent.”  Elisabeth laughed, pausing to spit in obedient solidarity when Sera cast an expectant eye her way.

            “Charming,” Dorian drawled as he fiddled with a scratch on his staff.  “And here we all were hoping that the cultural influences of your courtship would go the other way.”

            “Speak for yourself,” Bull retorted with a grin.  “Boss gets way too tightly wound with the whole ‘running a kingdom’ gig.  No one better to keep her loose than the master herself.”

            “Bloody right.” Sera slapped Bull’s outstretched palm.  “Unless that was an insult.  Then you can piss off.”

            Elisabeth rolled her eyes and wandered to the other side of the narrow lift, unable to keep a smile from twisting up the corner of her mouth.  Maker, was it good to be back in the field.  No Orlesian lordlings clamoring for her attention, no trade agreements to study, no dull-as-dirt meetings to oversee.  Six months since she’d saved the bloody world and she was already beginning to feel buried beneath the same responsibilities she’d fled in Ostwick all those years ago.

            She reached out to lightly touch the wall of the shaft as it rose up around them, skating the pads of her fingers over the rain-slick stone.  Potential budding crisis aside, she was more than a little thrilled to be descending into a realm as steeped in legend and mystery as the lost kingdom of the dwarves.  What young adventurer hadn’t dreamed of exploring the Deep Roads, after all?  Following in the footsteps of the Wardens, cutting back the evil of the world at its very source.  Just the thought made her muscles itch with excitement.

            “Elisabeth, would you be so kind as to tell us what exactly we’re to do once we reach the bottom of this Maker-forsaken hole?”

            “There should be someone for us to meet down there,” Elisabeth replied, turning her attention back to the others.  “A Shaper from Orzammar.”

            “A record-keeper?” Dorian scratched his chin as he pondered the curiosity.  “Why they would send one of them to parley with the Inquisition, I wonder.  I would have thought the Merchants or Miners Guilds would have had more of a stake in the destruction of lyrium mines.”

            Elisabeth shrugged.  “The letters Josephine showed me didn’t say.  The Shaper is apparently working with the Legion of the Dead in this area, so maybe she knows the lay of the land better.”

            “I’ve heard about the Legion,” Bull said.  “Tough bastards, by all accounts.  Be good to see what they can do in a fight.”  Companionable silence settled back over them as the lift continued its descent, stretching out until grey boredom overtook the party.  The air around them shifted gradually from the full, damp affectation of the sea to something Elisabeth had never experienced before.  The smell of caves, stale and mineral, undercut by the hot, dry air one might feel around a forge.  Already the dim light of the storming day above them had been cut to splinters, slicing across the unending procession of stone that might never have seen the sun before the quakes began.  It made her uneasy, and she could not say why.

            Dorian sighed dramatically.  “Is this the slowest lift in existence?”

            “Better than climbing down,” Bull pointed out.

            “I suppose.”  Dorian leaned on his staff as he yawned.  “I could do with some music, though.  Maybe something with a flute.”

            “Oh!  Oh, frig; I can’t remember it now.  What was that song those blokes from Amaranthine did in the tavern last month?  You hated it.”

            “The one that started a bar fight with the Orlesian merchant’s guild that got out into the bailey and ended with fifty people at the healer’s and twenty-eight in the stocks?  Of course I hated it!  It was positively boorish and I lost four sets of robes and three staves to the fires!”

            Elisabeth started humming the words under her breath, grinning at the look of horror on Dorian’s face and the raucous laughter from Sera and Bull as they joined in.

            “Row, me bully boys; we’re in a hurry, boys.  We’ve got a long way to go…”

***

            The last hurlock fell with a gurgling screech, and Elisabeth couldn’t rip off her helmet fast enough.

            “Andraste’s _tits_ ,” she swore, swiping the sweat away from her stinging eyes.  “Are these things really necessary?  I can barely breathe in this thing.”

            “Necessary if you want to _keep_ breathing, Inquisitor,” a muffled voice answered to her left as the Legionnaire lieutenant pulled his own helmet off.  “Darkspawn blood is poison, and it doesn’t take much in your mouth to do the trick.  Nasty way to go, trust me.”

            She did, solely from the dark undertone of his words.  “What lovely creatures,” she muttered under her breath, holding the dripping helmet a little farther away from her body just in case.  When the lieutenant saw, he laughed.

            She flashed a grin at him as they pulled off to a corner of the ruined chamber to wait for the others.  “And you really must call me Trevelyan, at the very least.  I usually try to save Inquisitor for people who want money from me.”

            “Fair enough,” he chuckled.  “Then you have to stick to Renn for me.  I usually try to save Lieutenant for people who sod up my rations.”  He leaned his axe against the stone wall and stretched his arm across his chest.  “You did real great out there, you know.  Like you’ve been fighting darkspawn your whole life.”

            “That’s quite a compliment coming from someone who does it for a living,” Elisabeth said, feeling more than a little prideful at the words.  She had been in pretty fantastic form for someone who was stuck behind a desk for months, after all.  It felt so good to move again, to remember that before she was staple of the stateroom, she was a _terror_ on the field.

            “Word is you’ve hunted all sorts topside,” Renn said, looking over with a gleam in his eye.  “Even a dragon.”

            “Indeed I have,” Elisabeth grinned rakishly.  “You haven’t lived ‘til you’ve felt its wings pulling you in.”

            A new laugh echoed around across the stone as the others caught up to them.  “Careful, Renn,” the Shaper Valta smirked as she sheathed her sword.  “I believe you’re drooling.”  Renn rolled his eyes and made an amiably dismissive gesture in her direction.

            Elisabeth chuckled at the exchange, winking at Sera when she came up beside her.  Sera leaned into her shoulder with a grin.  “You’ve been holding out on me, luv.  Here I was thinking you couldn’t get fitter.”

            “Have to keep up with you somehow,” Elisabeth replied, nudging her back playfully.  “You know Renn was just starting to ask me about our dragon hunting adventures.”

            “Plural?  You’ve fought more than one?” he asked with clear excitement.

            “Piss, yeah, we have!” Sera responded adamantly.  “Four so far.  We’ve leads on another three, but they’re on the other side of this big frigging bridge that the Templars broke to shite.”

            “Tell me everything.  Everything!  Do their scales really make all sorts of patterns?  I heard that some of them breathe lightning instead of fire...”

            Elisabeth lingered against the wall as they started down the crumbling passageway that led deeper into the ruins of Heidrun, smiling around the mouth of her waterskin at Renn’s excitable inquiries and Sera’s animated explanations.  When she noticed Valta paused beside her, she offered the skin over.

            “Your culture is so different than ours,” Valta noted between sips.  “No lord of Orzammar would ever consort with someone like your archer.”

            Elisabeth snorted.  “That’s rather sordid sounding.  I’m hardly a lord, and we’re partners in most things.” 

            “She rules your kingdom alongside you, then?”

            “Well, no,” Elisabeth frowned.  “But I don’t rule a kingdom.  Lots of people do lots of different things.  I’m just…I’m–”

            “You’re the head of the Inquisition, are you not?” Valka asked, tilting her head in curiosity.  “You make the final decisions on the matters of your hold?”  Elisabeth felt her hackles rising at the continued inquiry, which Valka seemed to sense.

            “My apologies.  I meant no offense.  I was simply curious about the hierarchy of the surface.”

            “It’s fine,” Elisabeth replied tightly.

            “The deshyrs of Orzammar have very strict expectations for their public presentation,” Valka continued.  “They all have companions suited to their desires, of course; but they are rarely the same person they present to others as their consorts.  There are many political considerations to be taken into account when presenting someone on equal footing, after all.  The lack of this on the surface is…alien to me.”

            “I wouldn’t say there’s a lack of it,” Elisabeth muttered, sparing a passing thought for the piles of formal courtship requests that had become so persistent that she’d started using them for kindling.

            “But you do not conform?”  Valka looked over at Renn with an expression Elisabeth would almost have called wistful.  “I imagine it must be very freeing, not having to separate one’s self from one’s duties.”

            “I don’t think I’m as important as you think I am,” Elisabeth pointed out with no small amount of discomfort.  “I’m barely more than a figurehead.  Better people than me do all the work it takes to keep the Inquisition going.”

            “But you are what links them.  Leads them.  Your choices are what the Inquisition comes to represent.”  Valka shook her head with a rueful smile.  “Ah, you must forgive me my musings, Inquisitor.  I tend to grasp for straws to avoid thinking overmuch about the darkspawn.”  She nodded in the direction the others were fast disappearing into the gloom.  “Shall we catch up to them?  I’d hate to lose Renn for another three days if he falls in a hole from his excitement over your partner’s tales of dragon hunting.”

            “Of course,” Elisabeth replied, trying to ignore the weight of uncertainty settling darkly across her chest.

***

            The weight only seemed to increase the deeper they ventured into the thaig.  Even in the relative safety of the Legion’s far camp, sleep was not easy to come to.  Elisabeth stared up the yawning darkness of the cave above them and tried not to think about how much she missed the sky.

            “Oi.”

            She glanced over and up, seeing Sera stretching her arms out over her head.  “Budge over, yeah?  I’m knackered.”

            Elisabeth sighed and conceded, wedging herself a little closer to the wall to make room.  Sera had grown up sleeping anywhere she was able, more often than not piled like a Chantry mouse with a number of other children of the street.  The habit of proximity had been strange for Elisabeth to adapt to, but adapt she had.  She wasn’t quite sure how well it would work tonight, when they could not shed any but the outermost layer of armor.

             Sera gave the bedroll an analytical look before kipping down, squirming until she made herself comfortable.  Once she had, she stretched her neck up far enough to nudge the side of Elisabeth’s jaw with her nose.

            “Been awful quiet today, Tadwinks,” she said as she settled.  “What’s on?”

            Elisabeth shrugged as best she was able.  “Just tired.  I’d forgotten how wearing being on the road all the time is.”

            Sera snorted.  “Noble ponce,” she declared.  “Do you good, this will.  Can’t have you getting soft on me.  Especially before we get to Denerim.  Lots of people to show you off to.”

            “We’re going to Denerim?” Elisabeth asked.

            “Yep.  Soon as we’re done here,” Sera said confidently, grabbing one of Elisabeth’s hands and toying with her fingers.  “Take a few days to show you around right.  Get some proper food, too; bloody sick of all this Orlesian rubbish.  There’s a stall off the market that does the best bangers and mash.”

            “What’s so wrong about the food at home?”

            “What’s right about it?  I’d give my left tit for a slice of brown bread and a kipper.”

            “What a shame, that’s my favorite one,” Elisabeth joked, waggling her eyebrows for good measure.  Sera snorted again and hit her lightly on the shoulder.

            “Who do you have to show me off to, anyways?” she yawned.  “You said most of your Red Jenny mates were scattered all around.”

            “I know other people,” Sera pointed out.  “Loads.  Give me a city and I’ll give you two score people I know.  I even know Sister Scary-Breeches’ grown daughter that she doesn’t talk about on purpose.  Nice girl, wicked at Diamondback.  Doesn’t play the ‘my other mum offed an Archdemon card’ too often.”

            “Wait, _what_?” Elisabeth pushed up on her elbows and gaped.  “Leliana has…with – _how_?  And how do you…?”  Sera grinned up at her smugly.

            “Get to know me, Inky.  I’m amazing.”

            Elisabeth shook her head clear and settled back down, resolving to delve into that particular revelation at a later date.  “So these scores of people want to meet the Inquisitor, then?” she asked uneasily.

            Sera scoffed.  “No, I want them to meet you.  Especially those shits down the pub, saying no girl with half a brain would get in a league of me.”  She fidgeted around until she found a comfortable spot again, head resting on the flat of Elisabeth’s padded shoulder guard.  “Show them.  You’ve got a brain and a half, all the rubbish you’ve talked us out off.  And you’re nice to look at.  And you’ll stab them for me if I ask.”

            Elisabeth chuckled, started absently playing with the ragged edges of Sera’s hair.  “Be nice, won’t it?” Sera pressed sleepily.  “No one knowing who you are for a few more days. Just you and me.  And trouble.  Got word of a couple pricks who need a right knock-around.”

            “I can’t think of anything I’d like more,” Elisabeth admitted quietly, the hold on her chest already beginning to loosen.  No need to be the Inquisitor at all.  Just Beth.  Just Sera’s.

            Sera made a satisfied noise.  “Good,” she mumbled.  “Now you can stop thinking so loud.  Gotta save the world again tomorrow, right?”

            “Don’t we always?”  The question was half-serious, and the only answer she received was slow, steady breathing.

***

            The darkness was beyond disorienting.  This deep into the earth, this far away from the crumbling splendor of the Roads, even the air seemed thick with it.

            “I can’t see a shitting thing,” she heard Bull growl for the fourth time.  The hairs on the back of her neck stiffened when she the awareness of his shape behind her faded into the black.  Both Renn and Valta had sworn that something was lurking in the caverns around them, insisted against the lighting of a torch for fear of inciting their awareness, but Elisabeth was fast reaching the point that any manner of beast they might encounter would be preferable to the nauseating isolation from her senses.

            A sound was growing in intensity beside her; rapid, panicked breathing.  She reached out, her hand landing awkwardly at the crook of Sera’s tensed arm.  “Alright there?” she asked quietly.

            Sera jerked away violently.  “Fine.  Completely frigging bloody _fine_.  Shut up.”  Elisabeth pulled back, barely managing to muffle a startled shriek when a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.  “D-don’t.  I’m sorry, alright?  Don’t go.”

            “I won’t.”  She reached down and pried Sera’s fingers off as gently as she could, sliding the hand up her own arm so Sera could feel leather and mail and the warmth of something real.  “I won’t.”

            “Did anyone else see that?” Dorian asked sharply from the other side of the narrow passage.

            “What?”  Elisabeth squinted at the space ahead of them, unable to see a thing in the wretched dark.

            “Eyes,” Renn growled.  She heard him stop and draw his axe, the telltale sharpness of shifting plate echoing off the wet stone around them.  “Show yourselves,” he ordered.

            His answer was brief.  The air split with the sound of a projectile screaming at speed, then stopped with the wet, breathless _thunk_ of contact.  Something spattered across Elisabeth’s face, hot and slick.

            Valka managed a horrified call for Renn before chaos descended upon them.

            Light came in blinding flashes, casting garish blue shadows around them as the ambush was sprung.  For the first time since she was barely more than a child playing at mercenary, Elisabeth stuttered and jerked around in search of a target, nearly paralyzed by the fear of striking one of her own in the confusion.

            She slammed her eyes shut and listened for something, _anything_ she could place.  A smell struck her instead.  The sour tang of lyrium.  Something made sharp contact with her shoulder, a muffled strike that barely pierced the armor, and she whipped around to thrust her knife in the direction from which it came.

            It became a pattern she could follow; strike, turn, counter, wait.  Each cut she made glanced off solid metal until she blindly found a joist.  The death rattle was muffled in a way she had never heard before, the blood that spattered on the floor from the arc of her swing so tainted with lyrium that the smell began to sicken her.    

            The battle-blood burned in her arms as she cast about for another attacker.  “Dorian,” she heard Bull roar from amidst the storm.  “No use in hiding anymore, is there?  Light ‘em up!”

            “Gladly,” he yelled back as the damp air of the cavern began to dry and heat.  “I advise anyone who does _not_ want to be burned alive clear the cave floor immediately.”  Elisabeth sheathed her off-hand knife and groped forward in desperate search of a wall.  Her fingers had barely scraped against the rock when someone else’s hand latched hard around her arm and pulled.

            “Hush.”  It took a minute of blinding fear to hear it as Sera’s voice, to know the arm around her middle had been there countless times before.  “Handhold up and left, prat.  I’ve got you.”

            As she reached and remembered how to breathe, Sera called out over her shoulder.  “Beth and I are clear!  Bull?”

            “Clear!  Where are the dwarves?”

            “We are clear.”  It was Valka’s voice, thin and strained and wrong-sounding.  Elisabeth looked over as Dorian’s spell covered the wet stone in lightning, burning up anything unfortunate enough to touch it from the inside out.  The cavern rang with screaming, the smell of burning flesh and scorched lyrium enough to make her gag.  In the harsh light of it all, she could see the outcropping where Valka and Renn had managed to find refuge.

            Renn was still and limp, half lying in Valka’s arms as she held them off the deadly floor.  A thick, dark stain was already dripping across the stone beneath them, the same color as the splatters across Valka’s face.  She met Elisabeth’s gaze as the lightning began to fade, the heat of hatred palpable even at a distance.

            You did this, her eyes said.  _You did this, Inquisitor_.

            The light sputtered and died, and they were left alone in the dark.

***

            “Alright there, Boss?”

            “Fine,” Elisabeth answered without looking over her shoulder.  The lyrium light splintering up the walls and over the ground had her eyes pounding, and the constant hum of it had her teeth so far on edge that her jaw ached.  The nick in her shoulder was kept open and raw by the pressure of her pack strap, her feet were throbbing from running around on solid bedrock and she felt so caked in sweat and rubble and blood that she would likely never be clean again, but she was still alive to feel this miserably fine.

            “You seem a little on edge.” Bull pressed.  She stiffened when she felt his massive hand fold over her good shoulder.  “I know you want to hold everything down, but you’re gonna burn out if you don’t some shut eye.”

            “I said I’m fine,” Elisabeth snapped, jerking away.  “Go help Sera set up camp or find Dorian and Valka and whatever ancient vagueness they’ve tripped over this time.  I’ll go make sure we’re actually alone.”

            She stalked off, clinging to whatever manner of shadow she could find among the colossal stalactites in the hopes of holding back the swelling headache for a few more blessed moments.  Between the crumbling rock and the near constant attacks from the Sha-Brytol, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept for more than a few hours.  She could taste the sour burn of exhaustion in the back of her throat, feel the weight of her own body increase with every step she took.  Maker take this place, she thought angrily, spitting on the stone when it slid out from under her boot and sent her face-first into a boulder.

            As she managed to right herself once more, a curious sensation skated across the back of her mind.  Cold water buffeting around her feet on a hot day.  The smell of salt and sealing pitch.  The excitement of escaping the estate to see how people really live.

            Something compelled her to turn, to begin walking towards the cliff edge rounded out by the rolling sea beneath it.  Such a curious thing, so much water so far beneath the earth.  Always moving, always changing.  Such a lovely shade of blue.  The damp air that curled up her nose as she approached the edge felt cool.  Such a nice contrast to the crawling heat beneath her armor.

            The sight of the water pushed her headache back in waves, the sound of it rising over the lyrium hum.  Together they had form, structure.  Rhythm and melody.  It was beautiful, really; even out here in the thin, dead air.  How much more lovely would it down there, in the living, breathing water.

            “Whoa!”  There was a sharp jerk on her pack, pulling the strap into her shoulder with a vicious sting.  “What’s on, Tadwinks?  Doze off on your feet or something?”

            Sera’s face was shadowed in the sharp light, her brow furrowed in worry.  “You look like shite, luv.  Come have a kip, yeah?  I’ll take watch.”  It hurt to look at her, to remember the pain and failure and endless, grinding darkness.  She would understand.  Surely, she would understand.

            “I have to go,” she said, shucking her pack in one last burst of tearing skin.

            “Go where?”  Another hand on her shoulder, thumb against the bare skin of her neck.  “Andraste’s tits, woman; you’re burning up!  What’s happened to you?”

            “I have to _go_ ,” she said again, smacking the hand away and starting to pull frantically at the buckles of her armor.  There could be no more waiting, no more time wasted being lost in the loud, chaotic darkness.  No more monsters, no more expectations.  Only music.

            “A little help here!” Sera called out in rising panic, moving between her and the cliff’s edge.  “Bethy, stop it, okay?  Listen to me.  You’re sick.”

            “I’m sick?” she laughed in disbelief, throwing her cuirass on the ground as hard as she could.  “ _You’re_ sick!  Sick and deaf!  Can’t you hear it?  It’s everywhere and it’s beautiful and you want me to stay here in the dark with you?  I thought you _loved me_.”

            “What’s – Maker’s breath!”

“Oh, _shit_.”  She was swept off the ground before she could force her way past.

            “Piss, don’t hurt her!  She’s not right in the head.”

            “She was about to shove you off a cliff, Sera.  ‘Not right in the head’ might be the understatement of the age.”

            “Set her down flat, please, Bull.  You’ll need to hold her still enough for me to examine her.”

            “Let me _go_!”  She struggled in vain against the wall of muscle that lowered her to the stone and held her there.  A new pair of hands moved through the cold sweat drying on the skin of her arms.  “Maker, that’s a high fever.  No wonder she’s been so touchy.  I don’t understand how any infection could have progressed to this point so fast; she was completely well not even days ago and…”  A sharp intake of breath as the stinging, tearing pain in her shoulder flared.

            “What?  What’s wrong?”

            “There’s a laceration at her shoulder, streaks under her skin.  There’s…Andraste, there’s lyrium caked around the edges of it.”

            “ _What_?”

            “Probably caught one of those little bolt things in the caverns and passed it off as a scratch.  Ah, Boss…”

            “Someone better tell me what in the _fucking_ Void is going on before I–”

            “She’s been poisoned.  Very badly.  Raw lyrium in the blood brings all manner of damage to the body, but even more to the mind.  The higher her fever gets, the more of her we will lose.”

            “Let me **_go_**!” she tried again, straining against the weight on her wrists and screaming.  “I have to go!”

            “Fasta vass, I don’t even know where to – Sera?  Sera, come back!”

            “She can’t deal with watching right now, pretty boy.  Put the Boss out so we can hear ourselves think, alright?”

            “Alright.”  Magic twisted through her and muffled the world was black and silent.

***

            The song was everywhere when she woke.  Music in her eyes, color in her ears, throbbing through her veins with the warmth of whiskey.  It was lovely.  So much better than the itching, crawling fever in her blood.  The memory of pain was hazy, fading quickly beneath the music.  Had it even happened?  Had there been anything before this wondrous moment?

            “Bethy,” she heard someone say.  How strange to hear a voice among the noise.  Did she know it?  She certainly didn’t know the name.  “C’mon, Tadwinks.  Need you to come around for me.”

            She saw a woman when she complied with the request, sharp-featured and sad.  Pretty.  She felt her heart stutter in her chest for some reason.

            “Hey, you,” the woman said, smiling in a way that didn’t fit her face.  Why was she sad?  She should never be sad.  “We’re almost done here, yeah?  Gonna go check out the creepy statue over there with Valka then we’re going home.  Get you fixed up right and proper soon as we’re there, you’ll see.  Everything’s going to be fine.”

            Looking at the woman made her itch.  The half-memory of a laugh, a look, a taste.  Violence, warmth, music that was not the song in her head.  She did not know this woman, but she wanted to.

            “Who are you?” she asked.  A breath passed between them, full of pain and fear.  She knew somehow that the touch on the side of her face was far too gentle. 

            “You’ll remember.  You will.”

            The woman paused for a moment, then took her hand away.  She leaned back on her heels to fish something out of a pouch at her belt.  “This’ll help.  Matches mine, see?”  She pulled out a shiny little band of metal, let it glint in the fogged light next to the one on her own finger.  “Was saving it for something better than this, but it might help, right?  Next time you get confused, just look for this.  You’ll know the person who has one like yours.”

            The metal was warm around her finger.  A stripe of white-gold in the blue haze.  Pretty.

            “Back in a tic, luv,” the woman said, leaning forward again to press her lips to her forehead before standing.  Her face faded into steel and song, and the itch was replaced by a hollow, sour note buzzing against the back of her head.  There were other voices, other movements.  The buzz began to hurt, and her own voice fell discordant across the music.

           Then everything in the world _snapped_.

           Grinding rock, shattering glass, the chaos of infection.  Shouting in the distance, roaring.  She covered her head with her arms and curled into herself as the rhythm threatened to crush her skull.  Something made a dull impression of a sound, stone on flesh, then a body scraped back across the ground beside her.  Too loud, too loud, too _loud_.  She couldn’t understand, couldn’t feel beyond the terrified bewilderment of something that _was not her_ splintering through her insides, looking for a name, a context, _something_.  She bit the inside of her mouth in the midst of the agony and felt the slow leak of blood coat her tongue.

            The sound abated in an instant.  The relief from pain was so intense that she wept.  There was only the music now, only the quiet hum of life around her.  When the sound of movement scuffed beneath it, she felt pulled to watch.

            It glowed like the sun she could almost remember.  Her eyes stung to bear witness.

            “Peace, child of the marsh.  You have served your Creator honorably.”

            Numbness spread like vines from her shoulder, winding down her arm.  She looked down, fascinated by the flecks of blue sand gathering along the edges of a cut she did not remember getting.  Soon there was enough for a small pebble of it, and as it fell away she saw her skin was whole again.

            “The Stone will remember your name and deed, Elisabeth Trevelyan.  Be now as you were, and return to your world.”

            Pure magic lanced through her body as lightning through the water.  She cracked her head back against the stone when her back arched from the force of it, and Elisabeth drew in a terrified, choking gasp of air as the world fractured back around her.

            Where in the Void was she?  It was so bright; far brighter than the lyrium caverns were.  What had happened?  Why was she alone?  Why couldn’t she remember how she got here?

            “Hello?” she tried to shout, the word ripping weakly out of her dry throat.  Maker, did that hurt; like speaking after a bad fever.  What is the pissing Void was going on?

            She heard the grinding rumble of rock giving way, but felt no hint of the tremors for the first since they’d been down here.  When she craned her neck back to get an upside-down glimpse of the source, she was as relieved as she was alarmed to see her friends stumble out of the rubble, battered and bloody.  When they saw her, they started running.  Sera reached her first, swearing profusely dropping to her knees hard enough to skin them. 

            “Hello, darling,” Elisabeth offered with the best approximation of a smile she could manage.  “Do you perchance know where we are?”

***

            “What’s your name?”

            “Esmerelda Titsborg,” Elisabeth replied flatly, sputtering when Sera smacked her across the face with the washcloth she was using to dry herself.  “Sera, for the fiftieth time, I’m alright now!  I remember everything.”

            “What’s.  Your.  Name.” Sera repeated with a pointed glare.  Elisabeth sighed and complied.

            “Elisabeth Trevelyan.  Daughter of Bann Richard Trevelyan of Ostwick, leader of the Thedosian Inquisition, Herald of the Blessed Andraste, and mistress to the most illustrious and ignominious incarnation of Red Jenny ever to pie an Orlesian courtier in the face.”

            “Ponce,” Sera returned, biting her lip to hold back a grin.  “‘Beth’ would’ve been enough.  Where do we live?”

            “Skyhold,” Elisabeth yawned, lying back on her bedroll and pushing the damp hair away from her eyes.  “Where it is much less rainy.  I’d almost forgotten how moist it is up here.”

            “Ugh, I hate that word.  Moist.” Sera shuddered as she wrung out the cloth on the ground in the corner of the tent.  Elisabeth laughed under her breath, closing her eyes and relaxing her sore neck across the lumpy pillow.  She was just beginning to slip off to sleep when she felt a sudden weight drop down over her hips.

            Sera stared down at her with a very serious expression.  “You are a tit,” she said firmly.  “A right bloody stubborn _tit_.  You know you almost bit it because of that, right?”

            “Says the queen of stubbornness herself,” Elisabeth deflected, smile slipping into a frown when Sera showed no reaction.

            “M’serious here, Bethy.  It’s a literal frigging miracle that you’re alright this time.  We could have kept it from getting that bad if you had just _told someone_.”

            “Told them what?” Elisabeth sighed.  “It was just a nick.  There were more important things to deal with.”

            “Right away, sure, but it took three days for it to get as bad as it did.  Didn’t hear a word from you then, when you were being all Inquisitor-y about everything.”  Sera hesitated, eyes darting around as if looking for anything else to focus on.  “I mean, I get it, right?  You saved the world and all that pish, and that’s grand and everything, but it’s done now and you’re still throwing yourself in front of every problem like you want to –”

            She cut herself off abruptly, shaking her head violently at the thought she couldn’t vocalize.  “‘Always’ should be more than a few months, yeah?  More than a few years, even.  Stop being stupid about this.”  The reason for her behavior suddenly clicked for Elisabeth.

            “Is that what this is about then?” Elisabeth raised her hand and wiggled her fingers in Sera’s face, the dim light catching on the ring around the third one that she’d puzzled over upon waking.  Sera glanced at it, getting red-faced and wide-eyed for a split second before looking away with a scoff.

            “It’s…whatever, I don’t know.  It helped when you were sick, didn’t it?  And it looks nice, so you should probably keep it.  Y’know, because it’s pretty?”  She ran a hand through her hair with a small, helpless noise, looking so uncharacteristically flustered that Elisabeth was helpless but to sit up and kiss her.

            “I love you, too, loony,” she said.  Sera grinned and giggled a little, like she always did at the words.

            “Still not marrying you, though,” she clarified as her smile became predatory, pushing back on Elisabeth’s shoulders until she was lying flat again.  “Wouldn’t want me to get bored, would you?”

            “Maker forbid.”  Elisabeth slid her hands around Sera’s hips and began to lose herself in the rising heat.  It had been easy once, before misfortune had burned a destiny into the palm of her hand, to a different woman for every situation.  She had learned how to be a soldier to some, a leader to others, and to hold the pieces left of herself away from all the roles.  But to this wonderful, confusing mess of a woman, she was everyone all at once.  A soldier that could not afford to be sacrificed, a leader who had to be cut off at the knees occasionally.  Pieces of a woman being stitched back into a whole.

            Sera was a force of nature, after all.  Maybe it was time to stop resisting it.


	2. Weather the Storm

**Chapter 2: Weather the Storm**

_Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,_  
I shall embrace the light.  I shall weather the storm.  
I shall endure.  
What you have created, no one can tear asunder.

_Trials 1:10_

            Sera let out a low whistle as another big, gorgeous Avvar lass wandered past with a monster of a broad-axe hanging off her shoulder.  Andraste, they really knew how to grow them down here.

            “Ahem.”

            She glanced over at the sound, grinning when she saw Elisabeth looking pointedly at her own dinner as she waved her hand at Sera’s face, so Sera’s eyes would be drawn to the silvery-white band of metal around her third finger. 

            “Are you actually jealous?” she laughed, shoving Elisabeth playfully.  “Frigging adorable.  Love you and all, but I’m not dead.  I mean, have you seen these girls?  _Woof_.”

            Elisabeth rolled her eyes dramatically and shoved Sera back with her shoulder.  “Here’s hoping our business never takes us to Par Vollen.”  Mmm.  Now there was a thought that deserved a few minutes of thinking about.

            Sera just grinned all the wider when Elisabeth made a little exasperated noise, like she was actually cross.  “C’mon, Tadwinks,” she wheedled, pressing in close and leaning up to kiss Elisabeth on the cheek.  “Let a girl dream.  Might get a girl in the mood for a bit of fun even though this is the soggiest end of nowhere you’ve taken us yet.”

            Elisabeth snorted.  “Eat your supper, sweet talker.  Wouldn’t do to accidently slight their hospitality before they let us talk to the thane.”

            Pleased that Elisabeth stayed nice and close while she talked, Sera dug back into her bowl of weird stew.  It was sort of like Ferelden food, if you squinted, which was at least a step up from all the poncey Orlesian pish they kept trying to push on her back home.

            Much as she wasn’t kidding about the Basin being at the arse end of nowhere, it was sort of nice to be out in the world again.  They’d hung back ‘round Skyhold for months after all the rubbish in the Deep Roads, since the people who give orders all hit the roof when news of Elisabeth’s injury reached them.  Being still was alright for a while; waking up in a nice bed with a naked girl every morning was hard to sneer at, after all.  The quiet gave Sera the chance to get in touch with all the Jennies scattered across the South.  They were even starting to look like a genuine organization now.  Weird.

            But their mates had started drifting away one by one; Varric spending more and more time in Kirkwall, Dorian taking months long trips back to Tevinter, Beardy wandering off to join the Wardens for real.  Cassandra and Vivienne were already busy being important nobs in Val Royeaux, so it was just Bull and Creepy Cole left to play with now.  Not that there was much playing to be done ‘round here, by the look of it.

            “Do the Avvar have nobles?” Sera wondered aloud, taking another bite.  “Haven’t seen any that look the bit, and they’re usually all over you when we get somewhere.”

            “You know, I’m not sure,” Elisabeth replied thoughtfully.  “I thought at first that ‘thane’ might be their word for lord, but they don’t seem to be organized that way.”  She set aside her empty bowl and stretched her arm across her chest.  “It’s rather refreshing, actually.  We’ve been in Orlais for _entirely_ too long.”

            Sera snorted.  “No nobles, nice looking girls, decent food.  Something’s got to be wrong.”

            “Such a pessimist.” Elisabeth flashed her a big, easy smile and dropped an arm about her shoulders.  “Why can’t it just be a routine diplomatic trip where we get some fantastic demon-hunting toys at the end?  Surely we’re owed one by this point.”

            Sera squirmed a little under the weight of her arm, mostly for show before she relaxed against Elisabeth’s side.  She was as warm and solid as she ever was, easy to hold on to in the weird, cold damp of the air.  Easy to ignore the cold, sticky unease on her insides with.

            Something was off about this place, and she’d been around long enough to know no one was owed anything.

***

            The hike back up the hill from the Avvar priest’s cave unsettled her further.  The words the woman had said were fine; weird, but fine.  But the way she said them felt familiar.  Bad familiar.

            Creepy was giving her the eye as they walked, tilting his head like he was listening for something.  For some reason or another Elisabeth really seemed to like the weirdy, so Sera tried not to say things about him.  Or near him.  Elisabeth and Bull were walking up ahead of them talking about something, so they weren’t likely to notice the look and step in to save her.  Didn’t matter, she could handle it herself.

            Pricks, she thought loudly.  Pricks, pricks, pricks.  A great big bag of hairy, veiny pricks.

            “I don’t like when you do that,” Cole said, grimacing.

            “That’s why I do it,” Sera replied matter-of-factly.

            “Why don’t you think of the kind you like?”

            “Do I even want to ask?” Elisabeth interjected over her shoulder, slowing her step with a skeptical look.

            “Like you don’t already know the answer to that,” Sera replied sweetly.  Elisabeth rolled her eyes and patted Cole on the arm.  Sera craned her neck to get a look at where Bull’d gotten off to.  “Who’s the big guy talking to?”

            “The huntmaster,” Elisabeth replied.  “Getting the details on that offering the priest wants us to gather.  With any luck, the beasts are on the way to that fisherman's place the thane mentioned.  I’m going to go pay my respects to the poor man’s son, if you two can manage to behave for a few minutes.”  Now it was Sera’s turn to roll her eyes.

            Creepy wandered off after a minute or so, which freed Sera up to follow after Elisabeth.  She lingered outside the door of the thatched hut, leaning casually against the wall and listening to the conversation inside.  The boy sounded like a bit of a tosser, but she supposed it was probably no walk in the woods to lose a father or whatever.  Like she really knew.

            “Inquisitor, I’m honored by your visit.  I’m Finn Cal– um, Finn Caldansen.  Forgive me if I don’t stand to greet you properly.”

            “Don’t worry yourself, lad.  How were you injured?”

            “A bad storm blew up a few months back; I was helping tie down the docks.  I caught one of our fishermen, but the tide caught me.  The leg never managed to set properly.”  Sera winced.  Bad way for a hunter to hang his bow up for good.

            “I heard about your father’s burial,” she heard Elisabeth say sympathetically.  “And the offering.  I’m so sorry for your loss.”

            “I tried,” he said frantically.  “I dragged myself from this cursed bed, but the pain…”  He trailed off, sounding shamed.  “The huntmaster found me after I collapsed.  Said we didn’t need another dead man.”

            “I think your father would agree with him, were he here.”

            “He won’t be my father much longer, but yes.”  That was a weird thing to say.  What did that mean?  Elisabeth asked the question for her.

            “I can’t make the offering,” the lad answered.  “When the sky-burial’s complete, I’ll lose the right to bear my father’s name.”

            Sera’s blood ran cold in a way she hadn’t felt in years.  She knew what it took to sound so crushed down and ashamed of something.  Knew it deep.  She took the step into the doorway and spoke before she could think better of it.

            “What the piss?  ‘Do this or you’re the wrong kind of elf?’”

            The both of them looked over all startled, but Elisabeth looked especially shocked.  Sera didn’t know why, she hadn’t been extra sneaky standing outside or anything, she must’ve known…

            Oh, frig, she thought as the _l_ rolled off her tongue.

            “Sera, what…” Elisabeth started.  Frigging tits, Sera hated that tone.  The ‘what haven’t you told me’ hurt all muddled in with the ‘I can fix this, let me fix this’ rubbish that made Sera want to spit.

            “Never mind,” she bit out, nodding at the confused looking Avvar boy.  “You help.”

            Sera turned on her heel and headed down the hill.  Elisabeth was polite enough with strangers that she wouldn’t be able to follow her for a few minutes at least.  Maybe that would give her the time to find enough sense to forget, because Sera sure as shite wasn’t talking about it anymore. 

***

            The bowstring snapped out from her grip, slashing a line across her cheek and down her arm.

            “Frigging shit,” she swore, clapping a hand over her face even as the welt began rise.  She hadn’t messed up stringing her bow since she was thirteen, what the piss was wrong with her?

            She laughed harshly at herself at the thought.  She knew what was bloody well wrong.

            That condescending, self-serving, too-smart-for-her-own-good, poncey _git_.  Picking at things she had no sodding business with, then getting angry with Sera for it.  Like it was Sera’s fault in the first place. 

            The past was done.  Talking about it did nothing, changed nothing.  It was done and it was _hers_ and she didn’t owe anyone or anything an explanation about it, no matter how stupid and entitled they thought they were.  All this did was prove that she was right the whole time, just too distracted by pretty words to notice what she knew to be true.  The only person who’d ever look out for Sera was Sera.

            She grunted as she managed to seat the bowstring properly.  Go on and let Elisabeth storm off hunting.  Go on and leave her here with no one but Creepy and her own completely justified anger for company.  Fine.  She was always better on her own.

            “But she loves you.”  Sera whipped around at the words, glaring right at the back of Cole’s creepy head.

            “It was so easy to start, water rising up around her ankles.  Warm, exciting, like letting her feet hang off the edge of the quay as the ships came in.  But she was wrong, you’re not water.”

            “Shut it, you stupid thing,” Sera snapped, turning her back on him and nocking an arrow while she looked for something of her own out in the wood to kill.

            “You’re fire, bright and hot and beautiful and she can’t look away, doesn’t want to even when getting closer hurts her.  Every time she reaches, she gets burned, and she’ll never stop trying.  She’ll keep trying until her hands turn to ash.”  Pissing Void, this was making Sera sick to her stomach.

            “I said frigging _shut_ –” she bit off the end of the yell when she saw him staring at her.  His eyes were glowing.

            “You hurt her,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.  “Elisabeth is my friend and you hurt her.”  Sera knew it, she _knew_ it was a frigging demon the whole time but would anybody listen to her?  No.  And now it was going to kill her.  Well frig them all, frig _everything_ , she wasn’t going down without a fight.

            Cole stopped reaching for his knife abruptly, and Sera let out a breath she didn’t remember holding.  “You’re hurt, too,” he said, like it was a surprise or something.  “Sharp inside, memories don’t fit into the life you’ve made.”  He tilted his head and looked like he was sorry for her.

            “She smiles like Kal used to; fleeting, fearless, foolish like her jokes.  But they took Kal away, the men who hurt you.  Bloody knife-ears, always taking what doesn’t belong to you.  Pretty little thing, aren’t you.  Don’t hurt her.  Please, ser, she’s just a child; my cousin’s girl.  My responsibility, my fault, mine.  Take me.  Take me.”

            Bride of the frigging _Maker_.  The bow slid out from under her numbed hands, clattering on the wooden platform as Sera filled with so much rage that she could barely breathe.  She wanted to pound his stupid, sickening face into mush.  “Get out of my _head_!” she roared, taking a swing.  He ducked it easy when it went wide, sorry expression never changing.

            “The ground takes away the air, can’t breathe, can’t breathe, tastes like blood.  No air in the nothing, just black and fear and no one.  Kal is gone and there’s no one left to save you.  The lady tried but you made a wall and you ran.” He paused to breathe.

            “You shouldn’t be afraid, this isn’t the same.  I used to be confused, too, but Elisabeth helped me understand.  She wants to help you even more.”

            “I don’t frigging need anyone’s help,” Sera snarled, shoving him back by the shoulders.  “Not yours.  Not hers.  Not anyone’s.  And I don’t care what in the ruddy, bleeding shit you are; you go in my head again and you’re a dead thing.”

            “I made it worse,” he mumbled to himself.  “I always make it worse with you.  Make more hurt, muddy the mire you hide down where no one will ever see.  I’m sorry.”

            Sorry?  _Sorry_?  Sera scoffed loudly and stalked away, looking for her bow so she could go kill something already.  But the creepy thing just kept following her.

            “Elisabeth hurts, like you do, but different.  Storming, seething, sinking, wrong words stinging as they left her tongue.  She doesn’t trust me, why doesn’t she trust me, what else can I do?  Won’t change, never changes.  I’m poison, ruin everything I touch.  She’s too clever not to see anymore.”

            Sera’s head snapped around at that.  Is that really what she thought?  What the frigging _piss_ –

            “Kid, what have I told you about pulling that head stuff?” 

            “Varric?”  They both turned around to see the little weirdy fix Cole with a reproachful frown.  “Why are you here?”

            “Sparkles and I got back to Skyhold around the same time.  We got the ‘come get our asses out of the fire again’ bird a couple days ago.  Seriously, _another_ dragon?  I can’t let you kids go anywhere.”  He looked between the two of them warily.  “Is everything alright here?  I feel like I’m interrupting a potential homicide, and I can’t tell whose it is.”

            “It’s _fine_ ,” Sera barked, glaring at Cole when he opened his mouth to explain.  Varric continued to look uneasy.

            “Okay…” he trailed off.  “Well, I ran into the boss-lady on the way up.  She wants you down there for backup when they head over to the probably-haunted island, so you’d better head over to the wharf, Buttercup.  The Kid and I are supposed to go talk to the local merchant.  Apparently the only thing he likes more than spirits is _Hard in Hightown_.  Go figure.”

            “Fine.”  Sera slung her bow over her shoulder and took off without another word.  So what if she was too turned around to be properly angry anymore.  At least there’d be things to kill now.  It’s not like they’d have to talk or anything.

            It’s not like Elisabeth would even want to, anyway.

***

            The whole stupid island was just _wrong_.

            One heel in the muck and she knew.  It started out as a buzz behind her ears, humming up against her skull, but then it turned.  She started smelling things.  Things that weren’t there.  That _couldn’t_ be there.

            The Denerim gutter after the rain, dog, soot, dank, piss.  Stale, burnt bread, softening in sour wine.  Parchment on the fire, parchment and scraps of something she used to know, because she had to be the _proper sort_ _of_ –

            “What the piss is happening?” she asked in horror as a sadness so deep that her bones felt old and tired made itself known in her head.

            “It’s the spirits,” Dorian answered, shifting all around as he walked like something was crawling on him.  “Influencing your mind, drawing sorrow from you like water from a well.”

            “They’re in my head?”  Andraste’s frigging tits, hadn’t she had enough of this for one day already?  But it wasn’t just hers, by the look of it.  Dorian’s twitching was getting worse, Bull kept twisting around, jerking his head like he’d almost heard something far away.  Elisabeth looked like she wanted to chuck her guts up, kept spitting on the ground like there was something foul in her mouth.

            _No, no, no…vhenan…I’m dreaming._

Piss, that _word_.  Sera knew it, somewhere so far back she couldn’t see the place or the time or what it even frigging meant but she _knew it_.  Someone used to call her that, a shadow-person without a name or a shape but she could almost remember the voice.  Almost, _almost_.  Her chest was on fire.

            “Make it stop,” she said frantically.  “Dorian, make them stop.  I can’t…it won’t –”

            “There’s a rift,” Elisabeth cut in, rubbing at the marked hand.  The last of the dying anger faltered at the sight.  Magic around the rifts made it hurt, she’d told Sera once.  Like pins dipped in vinegar.  She’d never be free of it, that pain.  The weight they’d put on her shoulders.  The memories that scared her to tears in the night.  Andraste, it hurt Sera to think about.

            “Well let’s deal with it and find what we’re after so we can go already,” Bull snapped, pulling his sword off his back.  “Seriously, Boss; next place we go better have way fewer demons.”

             Elisabeth nodded weakly and spat again before leading the way up a dank, sandy hill.  The ground slipped under Sera’s boots and everything in the entire pissing world felt massive and futile.

            There was a shack atop the hill broken near to splinters, dark and dripping in the fog.  There was light behind it.  Sick, Fade-green light.  The words got louder as they drew near.

            _This blood…my blood?  No, I can’t…_

            The rift was wrong.  Half-open, swirly, spitting off those little orange shadows.  It made Sera think of a glass turned on its head.

            “If you would, Elisabeth,” Dorian prompted uncomfortably as they reached the edge of it.  “Things will likely settle somewhat once we seal off the rift.”

            Sera watched her raise her hand, watched the wince as the magic locked and started buzzing between the mark and the rift.  The light started to hurt Sera’s eyes, then her ears when the shadows started screeching away until everything broke with a _crack_.  A split in the world lurking like a spider under the glass.

            _Telana slept_ , the voice scratched in the back of her head.  _I slept.  To find him, dreaming.  But I…the blood.  I’m, she’s gone._

            “Ameridan,” Elisabeth breathed.  “You were – she was trying to reach Inquisitor Ameridan.”

            “You can hear that?” Bull asked.  “I thought…this doesn’t feel like listening.  Shit, this is creepy.”

            _Ameridan, yes.  Inquisitor.  Beloved.  I, she, came with Ameridan to hunt the dragon._

            “What dragon?” Sera asked aloud, drawing the others’ attention.  “I’ll take a frigging dragon over this any day.”

            “Dragon…” Dorian trailed off, straining to pick out another piece of the voice.  “The Avvar were trying to bind one of their gods to a dragon.  The Inquisitor must have come to stop them.”

            “Because of the emperor?”  Bull whipped around again like he’d heard another noise.  “It said they were here for Drakon.  To save Orlais.  This is so shitting weird; can someone please make it stop already?”

            Elisabeth stayed stock still, staring at the rift.  “Ameridan was here right as the Second Blight was beginning.  This dragon would have broken Orlais before it even began.  He must have died putting it down.”

            _Yes_ , the not-voice crawled around under Sera’s skull.  _If he had lived, he would have found her.  Me.  But he didn’t, and no one ever knew._   Alone, all alone in the murky dark waiting for something that could never come.  How could everything smell like sadness?  It stung in her eyes.

            “Wait, wait, I heard something about where they went!”  Dorian edged closer to the rift, scratching furiously at his arm.  “River…metal spires…something about stopping the dragon.  It’s enough to work off of; for the love of all that is holy, Elisabeth, _please_.”

            Elisabeth was quiet for a minute, listening.  “We’ll find him,” she said eventually.  The words weren’t right.  Her voice was shaking like it did when she cried. 

            “You don’t have to wait here anymore.”

            A breath of relief – the smell of trail dust and leather and cloves – before the sadness came crashing back.  Elisabeth reached out her hand toward the rift again, but the magic felt wrong.  She wasn’t closing it, she was _touching_ it.  Andraste, why was she touching it?

            Before Sera could say a word, everything exploded into light.

            “ _Shit_!” she hissed, throwing an arm up to save her eyes.  Everything was brimstone and stinking magic and she heard a body crash backwards through the splintering ruin.

***

            “Alright, that should do it.”

            Dorian pulled his hands away from where the gash on her arm had been, leaving a patch a pink skin that itched something fierce.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go take a bath for the next six months.  Perhaps burn off all my skin.  Maybe both, if I get ambitious.”

            He patted Sera hastily on the shoulder before turning back towards the camp.  He might not have been kidding, judging the way he kept shuddering and scratching at phantom things not really skittering all over him.  Bull hadn’t been in a much better state when they got back, storming off to kill the piss out of swamp-things until he felt better.  Sera scratched at the newly fixed skin on her arm and started wandering back towards the shore.  Piss if she knew what to do now.

            She just didn’t have it in her to get twisted up again.  Frig Cole and his creepy head-games, making her doubt rubbish she thought she knew.  She wanted to forget what he said, but he’d gotten _in there_ this time.  She hadn’t thought about that day in years, frigging _years_ , and he pulled it out like it was nothing.  And the last bit with Elisabeth, just…frigging, bloody, stupid _shit_.

            She pushed a hand through her hair with a sigh, hesitating when the ground shifted into sand beneath her boots.  All of this shite wouldn’t be half as hard if she could just get that frigging _smell_ out of her head.

            On a whim, she started fidgeting with her belt pouch until she found her soap ration.  It was pretty nice stuff, thanks to Josie and her annoying drive to manage every single pointless detail of the Inquisition.  It smelled sharp and clean, like elfroot and flowers and home.  And it made Sera think of another stupid, half-forgotten memory.  At least this one might help, for once.

            She squared up her shoulders and started walking again towards where Elisabeth was sitting, hunched over on herself right where the water met the land.  She made sure to step heavily, so she’d be easy to hear.  Elisabeth always stayed twitchy after fighting, and this wouldn’t be any less awkward if she started stabbing things out of surprise.  She straightened up as Sera got close.  Probably recognized the footfalls.  She was clever like that.

            “Hey, you,” Sera said.  Elisabeth looked over with a wan smile as Sera sat down next to her.  In rare show, she’d left the marked hand ungloved while she was brooding, and Sera tried her hardest not to stare at the light that was still crackling from it.  “Catch.”

            The soap landed in Elisabeth’s lap and she gave Sera a look of confusion.  Sera shrugged and looked away.  “Lady Emmald used to wash my mouth out when she caught me swearing.  It’s horrible, but you can’t taste anything else for hours.  Plus, bubbles.”

            Elisabeth made a short little almost laugh sound and things got quiet again.  Sera didn’t look over until she heard gagging.

            “Oh, _Maker_ , that’s awful,” Elisabeth choked out, spitting out white froth and flailing around for her waterskin.  Sera giggled and passed it over.

            “I know, right?  Still can’t say fuck without tasting lye.”

            Elisabeth washed her mouth out a bunch of times, even started hiccupping after a little while.  Sera grinned when she laughed at the promised bubbles.  Piss, it felt good to laugh again.

            “Can we be done fighting?” she said without thinking, knowing it was the wrong thing to say right as Elisabeth’s expression got hard and sad again.

            “That’s all up to you,” she replied, shifting a little in the sand.  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I pushed.”

            Piss.  Sera sighed and scratched at the itch on her arm.  “I’m sorry I pushed back,” she admitted reluctantly.  “Shouldn’t have said the thing in the first place.  Just sort of came out.”  She looked over at Elisabeth as she tried to organize her thoughts.

            “I told you I was shit at this.  I did.  Most girls have the sense to leave by this point, yeah?”

            “Well,” Elisabeth answered with a little hint of a smirk.  “I’ve often been told I’m a rather stubborn excuse for a woman.”  Sera almost laughed.  She turned her head back towards the water when it was too hard to keep looking at her.

            “Things are good, you tit.  Can’t we…can’t it just stay that way?”  Sera clenched up her hands as she tried to choke down all the feelings she was pissing sick of feeling already.  “It wasn’t always.  It was bloody awful most of the time.  I don’t want that touching this.  Us.  You.  That isn’t wrong.  It isn’t.”

            There wasn’t an answer right away.  Only the shifty sound of sand sliding against itself.  Well, that was that, then.  Sera always did manage to break anything stupid enough to stick with her.

            She shot stiff at the feel of someone sitting down behind her.

            Elisabeth leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Sera, resting her chin on Sera’s shoulder.  She was warm and solid against Sera’s back and _here_.  Still here.

            “It isn’t,” Elisabeth agreed softly.  “It’s not all the way right, either, but it’s not wrong.”

            “What’s right, then?” Sera asked, too shaky with relief to worry about how thin her voice sounded.  Elisabeth snorted.  “Piss if I know.”  Sera laughed and held on to Elisabeth’s arms like they were the only thing keeping her down on the ground.

            “Guess we’ll have to figure it out.” 

***

            Sera’s feet slid out from under her as she swung herself up on the ledge, bringing her face crashing straight into a half-broken column.  Frigging fantastic.  She shook her head clear and spat out a mouthful of blood as she nocked another arrow.

            Piss, even at a distance her fingers were going numb from the cold.  She didn’t know how they were even _moving_ down there, let alone fighting.  Dorian was locked in with one of their mage-y arseholes, so she twisted around and drew to free him up.  Five arrows left.

            Three more shots, three more dead gits.  Each draw hurt more than the last, pulling further and further left as her arm started to give.  The second split the leather on the fingertips of her glove, the third cutting deep into the skin.  They’d better wrap this up soon, or she’d be down a hand.

            She swore under her breath as the fourth arrow went wide, splintering apart on the stone floor behind where Beth and Bull had the last baddie cornered.  He was a big one; what was left of the baddies’ leader after all the magic, swiping the blows away from his body like they were nits.  One last shot for the big finish, then.

            Sera dropped to a knee and strung back her last arrow, whistling the call through her teeth.  It hurt like shite to hold back in an overdraw, weight stacked against the muscles of her arm, string slick and barely holding in the cuts on her fingers, but she didn’t have to wait long.  Elisabeth dropped right on cue, burying her knife in the bastard’s kneecap as Bull wailed into his back as hard as he could.  Dorian’s lightning held the bugger stiff, and Sera aimed at the empty space beside the helmet’s eyehole and let go.

            It punched right through his stupid head, and the thing collapsed in a heap on the icy ground.

            “Frig, yeah!” Sera cheered loudly, punching the air with her bloodied hand.  Smooth as frigging silk, just like always.  When she jumped up to her feet, the room started wobbling.  “Ow…”  Maybe she’d hit her head a bit harder than she thought.

            “Alright up there, my little imp?”  Dorian’s shape stood out a little against the shadows under her ledge as she started to work her way back to the floor.

            “Piss off and give us a hand,” she answered, yelping a little when her footing slipped again.  Sodding frozen magic.  Dorian managed to catch her halfway through the fall.

            “I believe those two actions are mutually exclusive.”  If she felt better, Sera would’ve smacked him for talking down again.  She did manage to flip him a rude gesture as he sat her on the ground, though.  He laughed and took her chin is his hand, turning her head this way and that as he looked for hurts to fix.  Sera winced at the crawly feel of magic on her insides and looked around the chamber for something else to focus on.

            “What are they doing over there?” she asked, trying to crane her neck to see the platform Elisabeth had made her way up.  Dorian pulled her head away before she could get a good look.

            “Talking to Inquisitor Ameridan, I think.  Hold still.”

            “Wait, you mean the git whose _body_ we’re here to get?  The one who’s been dead for eight-hundred years?”

            “The very same.  Stop squirming.”

            “Frigging magic,” Sera growled.  “I hate this place.”

            “I can’t say this has been my favorite outing either,” Dorian sighed, finally taking his hand away.  “I’ve taken care of your hand, and your arm will be fine with a little rest.  You also have a mild concussion and a broken nose, which I’ll need to set before I can heal.”  Before she could protest, he made a grab for it.

            “One, two…”  There was a wet crunch and the world went red around the edges.  The ground started rumbling around them, and Sera managed to get a watery look at the great frozen dragon becoming decidedly less frozen and breaking its way out through the cavern ceiling.  At least the air outside was warmer than it was in here.

            “Is everyone alright?” Sera looked back down when she heard the question, saw Elisabeth jogging over looking all worried.  Prat.

            “Scrapes and bruises, my dear Inquisitor,” Dorian replied lightly, wiping the last of Sera’s blood off on his already ruined robes.  Elisabeth took one look at the mess and frowned, opening her mouth to ask more questions before she was cut off.

            “That was really Ameridan?”

            “Weird, right?” Bull answered for her, fastening his sword back over his shoulder as he came up to them.  “He’s definitely dead now, though.  But man, oh man; not only an elf, but an elf _mage_?”  He whistled under his breath.  “The Chantry’s gonna shit itself.”

            “I suppose we’ll have to take care of that dragon-spirit thing now, then?” Dorian asked tiredly.

            “About bloody time we got to kill something that makes sense,” Elisabeth muttered under her breath as she knelt down next to Sera.  Dorian passed Sera a damp cloth to clean her face before he wandered off with Bull to loot the dead.  She mushed it too hard against her nose and hissed in pain.

            “Wait.”  A hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled back.  Elisabeth pulled the cloth away and swallowed.

            “Let m– I mean, can…uh, would you mind if I...?”

            Sera stared at her for a minute before realizing what had happened.  She had asked to help.  Tripped over the words like a tit, but really asked.  Not jumped in to fix it, not shoved her way into the fray.  Asked.

            Sera nodded slowly, and Elisabeth smiled like the sun.

***

            “I…I don’t know what to say,” the Avvar boy said, looking down at the pack full of monster-bits Sera’d given him.  Poor sod sounded like he was trying not to cry.

            “Say what they want,” she answered him firmly.  “Belong.  And when you realize that it’s shit to treat you like this, you come north, pin this to one of the boards outside a Chantry.”  She passed him a scrap of red fabric and clapped him on the shoulder.  “And ask for Jenny.”

            With nothing left to say to him, she headed back out into the weird, damp night.  The Stone-Bears were bring cheerful all over the place even though it was late as piss, which was kind of fun.  Lots of singing.  Lots more booze.  She swiped a mug of something someone had been nice enough to forget about and took a drink.  It was some kind of honey wine that they had a weird name for, but it was sweet and strong.

            She was small enough compared to this lot that barely anyone noticed her wandering through the village.  Andraste knew it was leagues above Halamshiral, but all the eye candy in Thedas couldn’t keep her from finding who she was out to find now.

            “What is it with you and parties?” she asked when she finally found her, sitting alone on a bench behind the tavern.  “Fun give you hives or something?”

            The smile she got back from Elisabeth was just…exhausted.  Like she was so tired that she might just want to kip down on the bench and call it a night.  “That’s the precisely the problem,” she replied solemnly.  “Hives.  Great, monstrous puss-filled hives at the very _mention_ of fun.  Maker protect the woman unfortunate enough to share my bed tonight.”

            “Eww,” Sera laughed, nudging Elisabeth with her shoulder as she sat down next to her.  “Really though; you’re alright, yeah?  You’ve got me worrying again.”

            “Fine, love,” she assured, flinching back a little when Sera fixed her with a look.  “It’s nothing.  Been a long few days is all.  You know, storming a fortress full of murderous Avvar, taking out a god-dragon.  And I’m no spring chicken anymore.  Everyone says it’s all downhill after twenty-six.”

            Sera rolled her eyes and scooted a little bit away.  “Prat.  C’mere,” she said, patting her leg.  Elisabeth stretched out on the bench and laid her head in Sera’s lap, sighing as she got settled.  Her hair was dirty and stiff with salt, but the rise and fall of her chest gave Sera a warm feeling she didn’t quite have a name for.

            “Just a few minutes,” Elisabeth protested sleepily, turning into the pressure of Sera’s hand.  “Josephine will have me flogged if I don’t let myself be seen around.”

            “Not a chance, Herald of Everywhere.  World’s all safe again and you’re done for the night.”

            Elisabeth made a grumbling noise in the back of her throat, like she wanted to argue, but she was asleep before the words left her mouth.  Never could manage to stay awake when she was touched like this.  Good little trick to know to keep her out of trouble.

            Sera knew rather a lot of tricks now.  What gross Starkhaven whiskey was her favorite to have when it got cold outside.  What book to slip her when she started to get fed up with politics.  What jokes to make to distract her away from worrying too much.

            She’d never been still long enough to learn about a person like that, even a lover.  Piss, she’d never even lived in one place as long as she’d been with Elisabeth by now.  If everything was always new, she never had to watch something old change for the worse.  And it always did, eventually; stories crumble away to nothing, people get old and die.  She always trusted the itch to come before it started to hurt.

            Looking down at the woman sleeping in her lap she realized that in the two years since that night in the alley, the itch had never come.  No one had ever on as hard as Elisabeth, and it bloody well chafed sometimes, but the times between those were…really the best she’d ever had.  They were _good_ together.  Really good.  Maybe some days she needed holding in, the same way Elisabeth needed holding back.  Maybe that was part of what made them so good.

            Elisabeth made a noise in her sleep, a pathetic little snuffling thing that meant she’d started dreaming.  She wake in an hour or so with a crick in her neck and complain that Sera was too bony.  Sera would make a joke about boning.  No itch, no boredom.  Just warm and shiny in her chest.  She laced her fingers through Elisabeth’s limp ones where her hand rested on her stomach, looking at the two rings next to each other in the firelight.  Even in the worst of the row, she’d not thought once of taking the thing off.

            Maybe marriage wasn’t such a scary idea after all.


	3. Few Against the Wind

**Chapter 3: Few Against the Wind**

_Maker, though I am but one, I have called in your name._  
And those who come to serve will know your glory.  
I remembered for them.  
They will see what can be gained,  
And though we are few against the wind, we are yours.

_Trials 5:1_

            “She did _what_?”

            Elisabeth grinned when the question joined the cacophony of others as her dearest friends nearly tripped over their tongues in shock.

            “She asked me to marry her.  I said yes, by the by.”

            “What, like it’s so weird?” Sera added casually, dropping herself into Elisabeth’s lap with a smacking kiss on her cheek.  “Been together for ages.  ‘Bout time I made an honest woman out of her.”

            “That statement is the opposite of so many things I hardly know where to begin,” Dorian said in a daze, staring at the pair of them like they’d each grown a new head.  “I just…when are you even going to...?”  Elisabeth looked up at Sera and smiled.

            “Tomorrow work for you?”

            “You’re on, Tadwinks,” she replied with a wink before looking over at Cassandra.  “You can do it right?  Marry us?  You’ve got the hat and everything.”  Cassandra appeared to be utterly flabbergasted, then strangely close to tears.

            “I…I would be…of course.  The garden is prefect for a wedding this time of year.”

            “But there’s so much to do!” Josephine interjected frantically.  “How will we get the license so quickly?  What of inheritance, or property matters?  Do we even know what is Elisabeth’s own versus what belongs to the Inquisition?  And the party!  How in Andraste’s name am I to organize a reception with so little –”

            “Breathe,” Elisabeth laughed, reaching out to rest a hand on Josephine’s forearm.  “I’m a fourth child.  The only thing I have to share is my name; all the rest is the Inquisition’s.  And I think it’s best we just keep this all within the family, don’t you?”  Josephine stammered for a moment, cut off as she was in mid-panic, before breaking into a tearful squeal of delight and leaping up to throw her arms around both of them.

            “Not that we aren’t all delighted, but what’s brought this on?” Dorian asked.

            “It’s all ending, innit.  Don’t get this many people together without something big about to happen.”  Elisabeth looked up again when she felt Sera start to fidget with the edge of her collar.  “Endings can get right off.  Why not start something to even it out, right?”

            “I think it’s a damn fine idea,” Bull declared, raising his mug with as wide a smile as Elisabeth had ever seen on him.  “Good on both you girls.”

            “Here, here!” Varric added.  “But you’re crazy if you think for one minute we’re not gonna have a party.  I’ll take care of all the details so Ruffles can enjoy herself.”

            “Why do I suddenly have a bad feeling about all this?” Elisabeth asked with a wry laugh as the gathering broke down into excited bursts of grand half-plans.  After a year of peaceful distance from the mess in the Frostback Basin, surrounded by friends she’d thought scattered to the winds with the realization of her most improbable dream naught but hours away, she couldn’t remember a moment where she had ever been happier.   

            Sera leaned over her abruptly to grab a mug, which she promptly chucked at Bull’s head.  It landed neatly on the point of one of his horns, and they both broke into riotous laughter.  Sera clung to Elisabeth’s shoulders and howled with it, wiping at her watering eyes when it subsided.  She grinned down at Elisabeth, red-cheeked and bright eyed, and Elisabeth loved her like nothing she’d ever loved before.

            When they kissed, she forgot about the crawling, prickling heat building in her hand for seven entire seconds.

***

            Sera was pretty sure that if she rolled her eyes any harder they’d roll right out of her head, so she waited until Josephine’s back was turned before she did it.  No need to have her trying to manage the piss out of loose eyeballs on top of everything else.  Some night off that would be.

            She took another swig out of the wine bottle she’d nicked from the bar and watched the all the people dancing about the tavern.  A couple of noble tossers had come by to see what the ruckus was about, but the Chargers had chased them off as a present.  Was her party, after all.  Hers and Bethy’s.

            Andraste’s tits.  Elisabeth was her _wife_.  She’d stood up before the Maker and everyone and sang the words from the Chant without even needing to look down to remember them.  They were frigging married, like for real, forever _married_.  How was this ever scary?  Sera’s face was starting to hurt from all the smiling.

            She heard Elisabeth laugh from across the room and looked over to watch her struggling to dance with Cullen.  “Why don’t I lead, Commander?” she smirked as she flicked her wrist and changed their positions, taking them both through the movement much easier than they’d been going.  “If only so I can retain use of my feet to walk to the Very Important Meeting that you and Josephine have been on about all evening.”  She winked over at Sera when she spun the jackboot out, red-faced and stammering.  What a night.

            Someone cleared their throat to draw attention to themselves right behind Sera and she yelped in surprise, nearly dumping half a bottle of Ghyslain red all over the front of her dress, which good old Lady Priss-Pants had just made very clear would be a capital offence.  She whipped around to see who had almost gotten her murdered on the night of her own bloody wedding and was genuinely startled to find Leliana.

            “Félicitations, my dear girl,” she said warmly, offering Sera a bundle of something wrapped in cloth with parchments tied on top.  “I couldn’t be happier for you both.  Please accept this gift from Warden-Commander Amell and myself.”  She leaned over a little closer to add quietly, “I’ve included the schedules of several minor lords and ladies who have proven rather…trying, if you find yourself in want of entertainment while Elisabeth is stuck with the Council.”

            “Aw, what a great present!” Sera put the package aside and leafed through the papers to find a good mark.  “Brilliant.  Thanks!”

            “Of course,” Leliana smiled.  She sat down on the edge of the closest bench to where Sera was perched on the edge of a table.  The quiet between them was companionable enough, but something in the air was starting to set Sera’s teeth on edge.  Sister Scary didn’t just slum around parties for no reason.

            “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Elisabeth this happy,” she said eventually, making Sera look over at her.  “Even with everything that’s going on.”  Sera narrowed her eyes at her.

            “What d’you mean, ‘everything that’s going on’?  She can handle all this court rubbish.”

            “Of that I have no doubt.”  Leliana pulled out a hip flask and took a sip before she continued.  “But it must be more difficult than it could be with the anchor beginning to pain her.”

            Oh, no.  No, no, no.

            “It’s not ‘paining her’ or whatever,” Sera snapped.  “It’s fine.  She’s fine.  Everything is fine.”  There was no room for creepy-crawling fear tonight.  She didn’t need the pity in Leliana’s eyes.

            “Sera,” she started gently.  Gently.  Like Sera was slow or something.  “The others may not have noticed the signs yet, but I know you must have.”

            “Of course I bloody have,” she spat.  “But everything’s going to be fine.  Dorian and everyone will help find ways to keep it from getting worse.  Everything is fine.  I will make everything fine. Keep your frigging nose out.”

            The hand that landed on her knee was more threatening than it was comforting.  “Keep your voice down.  There is no reason to panic.  I only wished to hear how she was doing from the woman closest to her.”  She squeezed once and let go, standing up and looming over Sera.  “Rest assured that I am using every resource available to search for a solution myself.  I will not ask after her again if you can promise to let me know when the situation changes.  Is that acceptable?”

            Sera glared up at her, holding on hard to the anger to keep her head above the fear.  “Sure.  Maybe,” she answered through gritted teeth.  Leliana nodded curtly and turned to leave, weaving her way through the crowd until she blended back into the shadows.  Sera focused on the feeling in her chest, the heavy, churning heat that she knew how to hold, how to understand.  It was going to be fine.  She was going to shoot anyone or anything that made it not fine.

            “What’s on, lovely?”

            Elisabeth was there, outside of her head.  Tall and proud and a little drunk, just enough to keep her eyes dark and her shoulders loose.  Smiling down with that special kind of half-smile that Sera knew was only hers.

            “Nothing to worry your pretty head about, prat.”  She reached out and grabbed a handful of Elisabeth’s white dress coat to pull her in close.  Just a few more minutes, that’s all Sera wanted.  A few more minutes not to notice the dark circles under her eyes and the tension in her jaw, not to see that she almost couldn’t bear the touch of anything on her left hand. A few minutes more to keep her Bethy young and happy and in love before they put the weight of the world back on her shoulders.

            She curled a hand up into Elisabeth’s hair and kissed her the way she liked best; a nice, easy slide from gentle to ‘get a room’.  No one and nothing was going to give her those minutes, but she knew how to take them all on her own. 

***

            It was rather lovely in its way, a great swath of land so long untouched that the wilderness had nearly reclaimed it.  Maker knew it was a nice break from the endless parade of Orlesian cities, at the very least.

            Elisabeth leaned against a still-solid looking section of stone railing as she looked out from the tower, taking time to enjoy the green smelling air.  Part of her was already beginning to dread the implications of what they had discovered here, for the fate of the Inquisition, for the safety of Thedas, for the sanctity of history.  But for a few minutes, she wanted not to care.  Just a few more breaths of calm before the storm began.

            Someone came up behind her, leaning against her back as arms braced the railing under her own.  “No more holding out on me, Tadwinks,” Sera said, propping her chin up on Elisabeth’s shoulder.  “We’re married now.  If there’s another naked girl out there, you have to share.”

            Elisabeth laughed.  “Even if there was one, she’d be an ant from up here.  And ants are naked all the time, so I hardly think it would be noteworthy.”  Sera snorted and turned her head slightly to nip at Elisabeth’s ear in retaliation.

            “Just so you know, this…whatever this is – is _not_ our honeymoon.”

            “Maker forbid,” Elisabeth groaned.  “I don’t want the Qun, the Inquisition, or whatever else is going on here within a hundred leagues of our honeymoon.”

            “Good answer.  Knew I married you for a reason.”

            Elisabeth chuckled and pulled one of Sera’s arms around her.  “Any thoughts on where you want to go?  We could always stop by Kirkwall and scandalize the nobility by making use of Varric’s wedding present.”

            “What, the key?”  Sera made a thoughtful noise.  “Could fit a lot of fancy underpants on a chain net.  Might be fun.”

            “I more meant the title and estate, but I must admit your idea has its merits.”  Elisabeth threw a sly look over her shoulder at the emerging realization.  “You know, that would make you Lady Trevelyan as well, wouldn’t it?”

            Sera growled and flipped Elisabeth around, bending her back slightly over the railing.  “Shut it.  S’a long way down, yeah?”

            Elisabeth grinned.  “Why yes it is, my dear _Comtesse_.”

            “Arse,” Sera accused.

            “Whatever milady insists.”

            “Put that smart mouth to better use, you tit,” Sera rolled her eyes and yanked Elisabeth down by a handful of her collar.  Laughing too much to kiss properly might have been one of the best problems Elisabeth had ever encountered.

            “Wrap it up, lovebirds,” she heard someone call from the stage of the tower above their heads.  When she cracked an eye open, she saw the grizzled beard and fond smile of Thom Rainier looking down at them.  “If I have to hear one more story about stripweed from Dorian, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

            Sera flipped him an archer’s salute without looking, pulling a very particular maneuver with her tongue that made it difficult for Elisabeth to pay attention to anything else.  It was easy to let the world slip away, to feel the thin leather and callused skin brushing against her face, the smell pine resin and sugar sharp upon the clean, free air.  All until the near-forgotten heat prickling in her hand flared to sudden, painful life.

            “Ah,” she hissed, jerking back suddenly and whipping her hand away from Sera on instinct.

            “What?  What’s happened?”

            “It’s nothing,” Elisabeth deflected, clenching the hand into a fist before trying to shake the pain out.  “Just another flare.  It’s fine now.”

            “Like piss it is,” Sera said shortly.  “That’s the fourth time since we’ve been here.  Dorian’s ward-whatsit isn’t working, is it?”

            “I’m sure it just needs a little adjustment, that’s all.”  Elisabeth tried to put on a reassuring smile, to push down awareness of the searing magic constantly snarling just beneath her skin.  She didn’t want to think about any of it, the pain, the crushing responsibility, the black, billowing guilt that her selfish fear would soon leave the woman she loved above all else alone in the world.

            Sera frowned and opened her mouth to call up to Dorian, stopping at the creak of leather as Elisabeth tightened her grip on the railing. “I’ll get him in a minute” she promised, weak in the face of her own fast-unraveling fate.  She raised her hand, smoothed her thumb over the line of Sera’s jaw and swallowed hard.

            “I just want a few more minutes with you.”

***

            Bloody, pissing, frigging _shit_.  Sera reached the end of the hallway again and took a minute to kick the stupid marble before starting back the way she came.  She was tired enough to fall over and anxious enough to climb out of her own frigging skin.  Her hair was well on end by the time she reached the other end of the hallway.  The door stayed shut.

             How in Andraste’s ruddy name had it gotten so bad so fast?  Qunari in the elfy shite, elves in the dwarfy shite, great barrels of exploding horribleness in the normal people shite.  How many almost ends of the world did she have to see before whoever was up there decided she’d learned the lesson?  Piss, what even _was_ the lesson?

             The voices behind the door were getting angrier and angrier with each pass.  Even Josephine was yelling now.  Sera couldn’t tell about what, damn the thick, expensive wood to the Void, but whatever was going on had to be bad if even _her_ composure’d gone out the window.

              Sera stopped mid-step when she felt the air stale shift.  The little hairs on her arms stiffened at the spark of magic in the air as she heard Elisabeth _scream_.

              “ _Shit!  Damn it!_ ”  Sera dashed over to the door and pressed as close as she could to hear what the piss was happening.

              “We saved Orlais, and they’re angry.  We saved Ferelden, and _they’re_ angry.  We close the Breach _twice_ , and my own hand is trying to kill me.  Would one thing in this **_fucking world_** stay fixed?”

              There was a sound then, a muffled _crack_ like a hand hitting the wall, and Sera pushed back in horror as Fade-green light splintered through the door in twisting vines.  She was leaning against the opposite wall and trying to get her breath back when the door swung open a minute later.

              Elisabeth looked like she wanted to kill someone.  Shoulders heaving, arms shaking, hand constantly spitting off magic.  She slammed the door closed behind her and snarled.

              “Bethy?” Sera tried hesitantly.  She went stiff at the sound of her name, turning around slowly.  Even her eyes were glowing with that horrible light now.  When she saw Sera, she broke to pieces.

              It took Sera three big steps to get to her.  Elisabeth wrapped her good arm around Sera and held on hard. 

              “Knock-knock,” Sera blurted out in a panic.

              “…what?” came the mumbled reply.

              “Knock-knock,” Sera repeated.  Elisabeth sighed into her shoulder.

              “Who’s there?”

              “Interrupting bronto.”

              “Interrupting bron–”

              “Moo!”  Sera laughed frantically.  “Piss, I said it too soon.  It was supposed to be moo instead of who.  Funny, right?  Please laugh.”

              She did.  Weakly at first, like she was forcing it, but then there was more.  And then it was scary.  It wasn’t long before her whole body was shaking and she was struggling to breathe through it.

              “I’m going to die,” she laugh-sobbed.  “I’m going to die and you’re telling knock-knock jokes.”

              “No.” Sera said, shaking her head and pushing Elisabeth back far enough to see her horrible Fade-green eyes.  “You’re _sick_ and I’m telling knock-knock jokes.  Because you like to laugh when you’re sick to forget about how bad you feel. Know why I know that?  Because I’m your frigging _wife_ and I know how to take care of you!  Will you just bloody _let me already_?”

              Sera felt her heart sink right to her stomach when Elisabeth shook her head.  “Can’t,” she whimpered breathlessly.  “Not safe now.  You have to go.  You have to –”

              “Are you frigging _mad_?” Sera shoved Elisabeth back into the wall as she yelled.  “I’m not letting you out of my pissing sight!”  Elisabeth was still shaking all over, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes as she sank down to the floor.

              “You don’t understand.  I don’t know what’s happening and it won’t stop.  I could hurt you.  I could _kill you_.”  Sera swallowed down her own fear and knelt down in front of her.

              “Then that’s how I go, yeah?”  All the blood drained from Elisabeth’s face.  She opened her mouth to say some other stupid self-sacrificing thing, but Sera cut her off right quick.

              “Shut it and listen.  I’m.  Not.  Going.  Anywhere.  We’ll fix this.  We’ll get you better and we’ll go home.  This is shite, frigging all of it is just _shite_ so just forget about it.  Just you and me now.  Just like always.”  She tried to smile as she swiped her thumb across the dampened scar on Elisabeth’s cheek.  “We promised the Maker and everything, right?  Don’t make me go and get Cassandra to beat you up with the Chant.  She’ll do it.”

              Elisabeth managed a sad little shadow of a laugh at that, holding Sera’s hand to her face with her own.  The mark flared again in her off-hand, magic lashing against Sera’s side in crooked lines of fire.  Elisabeth tried to jerk away, but Sera would have none of it.

              “Don’t even try it,” she warned, holding on that much harder.  “Not letting you go.  Not now, not ever.”

***

              “Get back,” Elisabeth warned as her hand started to spasm uncontrollably, energy building no matter how hard she clenched her fist.  “Everyone get back _now_!”

              She collapsed to her knees, fire splintering all the way up her arm as she sloshed down into the marsh.  She managed to shove her hand down into the muck before the mark discharged.  The resulting explosion burned away the muddy water as it blew her backwards.  It was a struggle to get back to her feet as the others ran over to help.

              “I’m alright,” she panted.  “It’s alright.  I’m alright.”  The sounds of scraping metal and war cries crested over the rise of the ruin crumbling into the hillside.

              “I need to reapply the ward,” Dorian said shakily, glancing over at Sera and Bull as he moved closer to Elisabeth’s side.  “You two should go clear the way so we can move as quickly as possible.”  Sera went ashy grey at the suggestion, terror and rage warring on her face as she protested.

              “No, I won’t leave–”

              “Please,” Elisabeth begged, eyes beginning to sting as the pressure of magic built ever faster beneath her skin.  “Please.  I’m right behind you, I swear.”  Sera swallowed, stared at her for a long moment, then nodded reluctantly.  She bolted off towards the fighting with Bull on her heels.

              “She’ll shoot you when she finds out you were lying, you know,” Dorian said with pale humor as he brought his hands over Elisabeth’s arm.  He winced in pain when a tendril of magic snapped out across his fingers.  “Blessed Andraste.  I can’t even find what’s left of your hand to start the ward.”

              “Is there anything you can do?” she asked through gritted teeth.  He shook his head even as he spoke.  “I may be able to freeze the gauntlet to maintain the structure for a few more minutes, but even that will break.  I…Maker’s Mercy, Elisabeth.  I’m so sorry.”

              “It’s alright, Dorian.”  She looked at him with the closest thing to a smile she could manage.  “It’s going to be alright.”

              “Is there…is there anything I can do for you?”  Elisabeth nodded, pulling her right glove off with her teeth and baring her hand.

              “Please take off my ring and give it to Sera.  She won’t take anything else.”

              Dorian winced and complied.  Her hand felt bare without it.  As he pocketed the ring, she struggled to pull her off-hand knife from its sheath.  With great effort, she gripped it as hard as she could manage and held out the arm to prepare for the spell.

              “I’m not dying without a knife in my hand,” she ground out. 

              The ice hurt almost more than the heat spiraling up her arm.  Dorian whispered apologies she couldn’t hear over the blood roaring in her ears as he pulled her to her feet.  He tried to take most of her weight, but she knew she couldn’t risk being that close to anyone when this last failsafe gave way.  She pulled away hard and began to stagger down the overgrown path towards the mirror.

              Every step was agony.  Her surroundings began to fade as she walked.  There was no stone, no earth, no water.  By the third mirror she passed through, there was nothing left but the will to go forward.  Everything she saw was stained the color of rust, thick and lurid as half-dried blood.

              The air she entered was so thick with magic that she could taste it.  The veil was all but gone in this place.  The Qunari mage glowed lyrium-blue in the center of it, radiating a power that made the anchor sing.

              Sera was pinned down, shielding herself behind a gnarled ruin of a tree that was fast burning away.  Elisabeth lengthened her stride, forced herself faster, faster, _faster_.  Leapt on the mage’s back and sank her knife into the muscle.

              She grasped for thoughts of her as the end began.

              The knife kicked as she forced it down between the bones.  The ice around her hand shattered as the blade sheared against the spine.  The mark discharged as the mage’s great horned head pitched back in the moment of his death.  The force of the explosion sent her flying backwards, falling through the hot-cold flash of sensation as she passed through the eluvian at speed.

              The mirror shattered behind her as she hit the brush on the other side.

***

              It didn’t feel like anything more than glass.  Just a shard of dull, useless glass, so cold that it pulled the heat from her hands.  Something splashed across the surface of it, dripping down to the ground when she wiped angrily at her eyes again.  Stupid frigging mirror.  Stupid _fucking_ magic.

              She didn’t bother looking up when she felt someone big sit down in the dirt next to her.  Bull had left her mostly alone after Dorian went to tell the others what’d happened.  Must have been close to an hour now.  He’d be back soon.  Bull was here to get her ready to leave.

              “I’m not going,” she snarled.  Or tried to, at least.  The sound that actually came out of her mouth could’ve been a whipped dog trying to talk.  Bull’s hand on her back just reminded her how much everything _hurt_.

              “I know,” he said simply.  She looked up at him in surprise and saw him staring at the shattered mirror.  “She wouldn’t want you to stay here forever, though.”  Sera couldn’t summon up an answer, couldn’t hold on to the anger long enough to stay above the grief.  He wasn’t all the way wrong.  But she couldn’t bear to think of what it meant if he was all the way right.

              “It’s not fair,” she whispered.  Her hand looked wrong with both rings on it.  It would never be right again.

              “I know.”

              They sat in silence, alone with a shard of glass in the ruins of the dead people who’d taken Beth away.  She didn’t know or care how long it was.  The glass started to warm in the sun.  Faster than it should’ve, Sera realized distantly.  Fast enough that the tip of her fingers were starting to burn.

              “Ow!” she jerked her hand away and dropped it, watching in horror as it stopped falling before it hit the ground.  Quick as a flash, it flew towards the broken frame and melted into the surface.  The other shards of glass that littered the ground started to do the same, and the air crackled with magic so strong that Sera could feel it on her skin.  When the last piece hit the surface of the mirror, she could see to the other side again.

              Sera was already halfway across the clearing when someone stumbled out and crashed to the ground.

              “Bethy!”  She’d started dragging herself across the dirt with one arm, stuttering to a stop as they started to get close.  Her armor was in shreds.  Sera started begging the Maker, Andraste; piss, even the frigging Stone that she was still alive.

              Bull helped her turn Elisabeth over on her back, and Sera nearly choked when she saw those stupidly, beautifully blue eyes looking back at her.

              “Hey,” Elisabeth said weakly, flashing a little smile with bloodied teeth.   Andraste, was that the best she could come up with after coming back from the dead _again_?  Sera laughed wetly and pulled her arm back to knock her on the shoulder, freezing half-way when she looked down.

              “Boss, your arm…” Bull trailed off, staring.  It’d stopped spitting out the horrible green light, but it was black and stiff as burnt leather up to the elbow.  Elisabeth looked down with them, watching as it crumbled away to ash.

              “Huh.”  Sera watched her tense her shoulder and slowly raise what was left of her arm, shaking off the last flakes of the muck. 

              “Did he do this to you?”  Elisabeth nodded, grunting as she tried to push herself up to sitting instead of asking for help.  Sera ignored her noises of protest and helped her anyway.  She was a stubborn arse, and Sera loved her so much that it was hard to breathe.

              “He did,” she sighed when she finally relaxed, leaning her head back against Sera’s shoulder.  “And I’m afraid he’s not nearly as dead as I would like.”

              “Can’t wait to hear this story,” Bull said as he glanced over his shoulder.  “But we should really get you to a healer.  Who knows what else that piece of vashedan did to you.”

              “No arguing,” Sera added on, finding her tongue again at last.  The smile Elisabeth gave her was almost sleepy.  Her eyes slipped closed.

              “You got her?” Bull asked, ducking his head a little to look right at Sera.  She nodded, and Bull took off running towards the mirror that lead the way back to Halamshiral.

              “It doesn’t hurt,” Elisabeth murmured.  Sera looked back down when she felt Elisabeth turn her head a little more into her shoulder, like she was making herself comfortable.  She opened her eyes again and full-on _grinned_ , pinked teeth and all.  “It doesn’t hurt, Sera.”

              “Good.”  Sera wanted to laugh and cry and scream all at the same time.  She pulled the too-big ring off with her teeth, then moved as gently as she could to push it back on Elisabeth’s finger.  “Because if you ever take this off again, you’re a pincushion.  I mean it.”

              “Yesser,” Elisabeth slurred, straightening her spine long enough to brush her lips against Sera’s.  It wasn’t the first kiss they’d shared that ended with blood on Sera’s tongue, and it wouldn’t be the last.

              It was, however, the only time in her life that Sera Trevelyan cried for joy.

***

            Elisabeth slumped down hard on the stone bench, still buzzing.  The others wouldn’t be far behind, but for the briefest of moments in this uncaringly lovely garden, she was alone with what she had done.  If she was honest with herself, beneath the fast-fading rage she was exhausted by simply being out of bed.

            She glanced up when she heard rapid footsteps on the gravel.  Her reflexes were still so dulled that she barely caught sight of Sera’s hand before it cuffed her upside the head.

            “Ow!  What was that–”

            “For ignoring the bloody healer, you git!” Sera responded angrily, kneeling down in the dirt and moving straight for Elisabeth’s ruined arm.  “Not supposed to be out of bed for another fortnight and you pull this shite.”  She unpinned the sleeve of the dress coat and rolled the fabric up, examining the bandaging beneath it for blood.  The touch of her hand still stung sharply, but Elisabeth could see no evidence that she had reopened the burn.

            “Was a bit badass, thought, wasn’t it?” she offered as a meager defense, throwing on a dashing grin when Sera looked up.  Her anger fractured quickly.

            “You know it was, arse.  ‘Bout time you put those daft piss-heads in their place,” she nearly laughed, pinning the sleeve up around Elisabeth’s arm before clambering up on the bench beside her.  “But I swear to frigging Andraste, if you try something like this again I _will_ tie you up.  And not that way, so don’t even bother with that look.”

            “Spoilsport,” Elisabeth accused lightly, leaning into Sera with her good shoulder.  “When did you stop being fun?”

            “When I had to start being the responsible one.”  Sera leaned back against Elisabeth, threaded both arms around her waist and groaned piteously into her shoulder.  “It’s horrible, Bethy.  Stop being a tit so I can go back to normal already.”

            “Darling, I just directly insulted the representatives of the most powerful nations in the South and disbanded a military order created by a martyred Divine,” Elisabeth replied, dissolving into disbelieving laughter as she finally gave voice to the enormity of her actions.  “I don’t think I’m allowed to be responsible anymore.”

            Sera looked up cautiously.  “Is this happy laughing or going mad again laughing?”

            “Happy!” Elisabeth nearly yelled in her enthusiasm, leaping to her feet in a burst of excitement.  “Don’t you see?  No more politicians, no more magic, no more Inquisitor!  We can do anything!”  The weight of the words compounded with the unstable understanding of her own balance and sent her stumbling forward.  “Oh, Maker.  What are we going to do?”

            Sera jumped up to steady her, helping her back down to the bench before taking a step back.  “Easy,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.  “You’re going to stop being daft and stay still long enough to get better.  Then there’s work to do.”

            The serious expression broke into a familiar smirk as she pulled out a small insignia, red set in bronze.  “Plenty of other piss-heads who need knocking down, yeah?  Not to mention Solas-Fenny-Whatever-He-Is.  I’ll eat my boot before he gets away with all this rubbish.”  Elisabeth managed a thin smile when Sera pressed the thing into her hand.  “What’s with the long face?” Sera asked with a frown.  “You knew what you were marrying into.”

            Elisabeth barked a little laugh.  “That I did,” she agreed, tracing the Jennies’ symbol idly with her thumb, a stilted sort of sorrow trickling through her chest.  “I’m just not sure how much of an asset a crippled knifeman would be to you.”

            Sera took hold of Elisabeth’s chin, tipping her eyes back up.  “We don’t have assets,” she said simply.  “We have friends.”

            She leaned down and kissed Elisabeth firmly on the mouth, letting one hand slide around the back of her neck.  “We’ll figure it out, yeah?  Once you take your bloody rest,” she added on with a hard pinch.  Elisabeth yelped and laughed and burned with so much love that she wondered how her broken body could contain it all.

            Sera grinned and opened her mouth to speak, but stopped abruptly when some distant movement caught her eye.

            “They’re here.”  She set her jaw and squared up her body like she would have on the field.  “Don’t care how angry anyone is.  First person who yells at you is getting a punch in the nose.”

            Elisabeth levered herself carefully to her feet, wrapping her good arm around the front of Sera’s shoulders as she turned to watch.  “Josie looks much less like she’d like to toss me off a cliff than I thought she would,” she observed.  “And if I didn’t know better, I’d say Cullen almost looks…relieved?”

            “Still punching if they get mouthy,” Sera muttered, reaching up to rest her hands on Elisabeth’s forearm.  “You ready for them?”  Elisabeth smiled to herself and pressed her lips to Sera’s hair.

            “Where’s the fun in being ready?”

**The End**


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